Lewis & Clark Moodle
Site blog
We are in final preparations for our scene. We have all our dialogues and have practices multiple times through whole scene. By this point, we got the feedback, and are trying to incorporate the things that you (professor) advised us on.
Olivia and I met up Friday afternoon to do some run throughs and are looking forward to the feedback we'll be getting on Monday during our meeting with Amber! There are still a few lines we are trying to find the perfect way to deliver and we believe an outside perspective will help us with this process. The end of our scene also feels somewhat abrupt because of the way it is written, and we are hoping to get some insight on how to transition out of it smoothly. We've been putting some thought into what we would like our characters to wear, as Avery is an employee in uniform and Rose stays mostly in the projection booth and is therefore is allowed to wear whatever she wants. I have a friend who has access to a name tag maker, so I am hoping I will be able to get something along those lines made in the next week to add to the authenticity of the scene. I also own a pair of red sneakers which will be perfect for my character since it's noted very explicitly at the start of the play that those are the shoes he wears.
At this point, we are putting the finishing touches on our scene and are excited to share it with the class during the final period!
Alex and I spent most of our time just running over our lines over and over again. But now we are devoting time at looking at blocking/props and what thing out characters want to be known for doing. We start with looking at clips on YouTube of people performing and checking out what props are essential to get the point across. We are spending time writing a list of what we need. For example my character yells at Alex’s character for his backpack, therefore we know we need Hal ( Alex’s character) to have a backpack. Also, we know we need notebooks 103 to be exact but we only need a good pile to get the point across so we are working on getting the specific props and our blocking. When it comes to how we perform on stage we also read how it is really important not to have out backs to the audience so we also work on our stance, still working on how to make use of the space rather than just walking back and forth. So, that’s that and I hope everyone enjoys their break!!
Today was a fun but more serious and concentrated rehearsal. We especially focused on the second half of our scene and working on our urgency and speeds. I personally worked on the melancholy and the friendship and laughter between Dennis' character and I. Together, we worked on our urgency and the stakes in the end when Dennis is begging me to touch his eye and I refuse to. As we rehearsed, we talked louder and faster and with more emotion and body language. Also, Dennis especially did well being grounded in the scene tonight as when I looked at him during my lines he genuinely seemed inside the scene and worried for me.
Update: Rehearsal with Olivia is awesome, I think we are finding something new every time we run it, which is great 'cause the last thing we want to do is get in a rut. Today's second run also went well, real blood always helps raise the stakes. If only I could muster up real tears, that would be the icing on the cake. But for those people who wish to keep things fake, I'm attaching a video on how to do some simple stage makeup, all you need is a blue and red pen.
I have been enjoying practicing our scene using the techniques we learned in class. For example, as we practiced, we exaggerated our performance in order to stress out our emotions. Also, we stood far way from each other and shouted our lines when the stake was high. We have improved a lot in terms of listening and responding, which has been a problem. One important thing that we should improve on is to make our performance more realistic and emotional. Since we have been focusing on memorizing lines and what we were taught in class, we have not put enough emotion in our body movements or facial expressions, instead we have just emoted through our voice, so the audience will not be able to reflect upon our emotions. By the use of hand gestures and our posture, then our performance will improve and it will reflect our passion, our emotion, our hard work, and our energy to make the performance as epic as it could be. So the audience can sympathize with the emotional response that the director or author had put into the play in order to demonstrate their emotional and physical struggles during their era and what they had to loose in order to get to where they were at that time. I am thankful to work with Sarah and I am looking forward to performing the final product.
This past week we have spent the majority of our time working on specifics. We went through our entire scene and looked at the places where our tone of voice seemed to be random and not match up with the rest of the scene. An example of this is where I ask Torin about where his girlfriend is, even though she has not been mentioned yet in the scene. We worked this part so that my line sounded less random and less like I don't care. Previously, I was saying the line with a very laid back attitude. This approach just wasn't fitting with the scene. We have thus played with different tones of voice to try and capture the reason as to why Warren is asking where Dennis's girlfriend is. We have taken this approach to many parts of the scene. We are really getting into the tone of voice that the characters are using at different times. In some instances, we realized that we had overdone what we felt the characters behavior to be. We realized that Warren should not be totally making a fool of himself up on the stage. We realized that warren does care about the situation and he is not as laid back as we once thought. We have tried to work bits of depression and anxiety into Warren's voice in order to convey that Warren still cares about the situation. Torin has also become a lot more physical with me while rehearsing. I guess we are becoming more comfortable with one another. When his character is getting angry or serious, he often comes over to me and either pushes me or throws something at me. This has created a much freer environment for us to work in and more aware of how our bodies relate to the space.